Musha-mado

What a musha-mado is

A musha-mado is a window fitted with heavy vertical bars. Set in the outer wall of a Nagayamon, it lets those inside watch the road, and records treat it as part of the frontage of an estate of rank.

The Hiramatsu Residence gatehouse in Wakayama Prefecture, from the late Edo period, is described as 18.7 by 4 metres, Irimoya-zukuri with Hongawarabuki, its gate opening just south of centre with double doors of single zelkova boards and a wicket beside them, its outer wall boarded at the base and pierced with these windows in the earthen wall above. The entry calls it heavy-timbered and imposing.

The Takigawa Residence gatehouse in Aichi Prefecture, built in 1763, has Kagami-bashira at its doorway with a side door, rooms of two sizes to either side and a Geya on the west. Its interior has been altered, but the doorway and the barred windows on the front survive and, the entry says, convey the standing of a Hatamoto and Daikan estate.

The Yamada Residence gatehouse in Kyoto Prefecture, from the later Edo period, has both these windows and the horizontally barred kind in its outer wall, boarding at the base and plastered eaves on projecting beams, in what the entry calls a heavy frontage.

Two kinds of barred window

The Yamada entry names two windows side by side because records treat them as different things. The other kind carries horizontal bars. The east gate and range of the Fujino Residence in Osaka Prefecture, built in 1874, has plastered walls pierced with the horizontal kind above vertical boarding.

Both sit in the outer wall of a gate and serve the same purpose of watching without being seen. The direction of the bars decides the name, so the record's own word is the one to keep.

On site, look at the gatehouse wall. Heavy bars running vertically in a window opening are this type; bars running horizontally are the other.